Caring for Salt Prints

One-Hour Lunchtime Webinar: 
Salt Prints are prone to a variety of environmental and inherent forms of deterioration and are among the most vulnerable types of paper based photographs. They represent early and often unique images, thus preservation of salt prints is a priority in many collections.

Salt Prints, sometimes also called Salted Paper Prints, were the first viable negative/positive photographic process on paper. Invented in the 1830s in England by William Henry Fox Talbot these images were being made concurrently with other early photographic processes such as daguerreotypes and ambrotypes. The photochemical principals first successfully demonstrated with salt prints provided the basis for the dominant photographic print processes of the 19th and 20th century, which used negatives to produce multiple prints.

This webinar will discuss the basics of identification, history, craft, deterioration, and preservation of these fragile and important objects.